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Sudan Tribune

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Sudanese official expresses fury over new opposition accord

January 7, 2013 (KHARTOUM) – Nafie Ali Nafie, the Sudanese presidential assistant who is also deputy chairman of the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) expressed outrage over an accord signed last weekend between representatives of opposition parties and rebel groups fighting the army in different parts of the country.

The agreement was nicknamed ‘New Dawn’ by the participants.

nafie_2.jpgAddressing a graduation ceremony of the paramilitary Popular Defense Forces (PDF), Nafie used the religion ticket saying that the “False Dawn” as he called it, created a distinction between those on the side of God and the Prophet and secularists who do not recognize the Holy Quran or Islamic Shar’ia law.

The Sudanese official said that the NCP, which ascended to power through a coup in 1989 led by president Omer Hassan al-Bashir, came to apply Islamic law contrary to opposition powers which wants to establish a secular state “as western countries want”.

Nafie went on to say that the document signed by the opposition sets a beginning for exposing their goals and motives describing them as “traitors and agents”. He added that the signatories chose their “graveyard” by repudiating “the religion of Allah and the Sunna of His Messenger”.

He urged Sudanese people to review the accord noting that they meet in squares of martyrs while the “New Dawn” participants meet with the devil to conspire with him.

The Popular Congress Party (PCP) led by the Islamic leader Hassan al-Turabi was one of the opposition parties that signed the accord. Al-Turabi was the mastermind behind the 1989 coup before he fell out with Bashir a decade later.

Several of the reformists within the ruling party and Islamist figures allied with the government have circulated memos last year calling for dialogue with the opposition to fight the regime which they say have became corrupt and abandoned Islamic values.

Nafie has persistently accused rebel groups of acting on behalf of the West and South Sudan to destabilize the Khartoum government especially in Abyei and the disputed border areas.

Today he pledged that 2013 will be the year to decisively quash the rebels whom he reiterated want to separate religion from the state so that Sudan has no Islamic feature whatsoever. Nafie said that those killed on the rebel side will go to hell while those killed on their side will go to heavens.

The NCP official pledged to provide financial and political support to the Mujahideen to expose “clients allied with the West against the Sudan.”

In a related issue the NCP spokesperson Badr al-Din Ahmed Ibrahim warned the opposition of their alliance with rebel groups stressing that the ballot box is the only way to reach power and invited them to participate in the constitution drafting process.

On late Monday Sudanese authorities arrested several opposition figures as they returned from Uganda where the accord was signed. This included the head of the Socialist Nasserite Unionist Party Jamal Idris and Intisar Al-Aqli whois also a member of the party.

The opposition forces announced the ‘New Dawn’ as a step forward in their struggle against the regime where they agree for the first time on a charter to oust the Bashir government and work on building democratic state that does not mix religion with politics. It also speaks on the need to address issues of justice especially related to crimes allegedly committed by the regime in Darfur and South Kordofan. The signatories also call for respecting religious and cultural diversity.

The rebel groups which fight against the regime in Blue Nile, Darfur and South Kordofan also committed themselves to declare an immediate cease-fire following the toppling of Khartoum’s regime.

(ST)

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